12 Forms of graffiti have been developed as codes of communication in public places by many marginal groups throughout history. When one thinks in general about spaces where graffiti is found, there is a physical resemblance among them. In writing about graffiti Reisner wrote, "The atmosphere is secret, confining, subterranean and conspiratorial.. .In circumstances like these, a man is likely to assert himself graphically, a silent means of inscription" (1971, p. 26). There are many examples of past cultures who sought out such spaces. The most obvious are cave wall drawings. Later, Christians inscribed the symbols of their secret faith in catacombs to create a power of ritualistic significance. The phenomenon of the rise of Christianity may have been partly motivated by a desire to belong to a secret society that was in quiet revolt against the overpowering Roman Empire. (Once it became an authorized institution a different story evolved.)

13 Hobo signs of the "Dirty Thirties" is another example of conspiratorial, multinarrative symbols developed by a fugitive subculture (Dreyfuss, 1972). These secret codes transmitted practical information about where to find food and shelter without being detected by authorities. Thousands of homeless men riding the rails found a solidarity through their need to help each other survive. They inscribed symbols to communicate a simple language and to signify their presence in the world.

14 The roots of the hip-hop movement trace back to the mid 1970s to the inner cities of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. It started in low income Black and Hispanic neighbourhoods and eventually spread into middle-class urban and suburban regions. Each city maintains its claim as the originator of hip-hop music. Two acknowledged "fathers" of hip-hop who pioneered DJ techniques and were instrumental in setting the hip-hop movement in motion are Grandmaster Flash (a New York rap group), and Afrika Bambaataa (Washington D.C). Both still perform and Bambaataa is especially influential in trying to promote the original hip-hop ethics of unity and non-categorization (Alvi, 1997, p. 13). Today there is still an east coast/west coast rivalry, primarily between Los Angeles and New York, that is highlighted in the rap lyrics and some messages on freight-car graffiti. Although there are still regional differences in attitudes, politics and preferences for styles, hip-hop graffiti has become global with New York writers being viewed next to Los Angeles writers on the Web and in fanzines.

15 Early graffiti writers who grew out of the hip-hop culture are harder to trace due to the lack of a written history and the short life span of the medium; graffiti tends to be cleaned off by the authorities or painted over by rival artists. Many sources (Chalfant, 1984; Castleman, 1982), cited TAKI 183 in New York as the originator of the tag. The tag is a writer's name, which is drawn like a calligraphic symbol, usually with a marker or spraypaint (Fig. 2).

16 In 1971 the New York Times ran a story on TAKI who wrote his name everywhere (Castle-man). The article prompted a wave of copycats who also adopted a name/number pseudonym (EVA 62, ELSIE 137). Crudely-drawn, magic-marker tags developed into spray-paint versions, and both types began to cover subway trains under illegal conditions. Eventually each tagger developed his or her own formal style. As tag artists became bolder, the ultimate goal was to spray a commuter train from top to bottom, side to side. As the authorities and transit commission cracked down on graffiti, the emphasis shifted from quantity to quality of the tag. The New York transit commission would instantly pull any car with graffiti off the tracks to be buffed (cleaned by a chemical wash). Gradually large-scale works, and later any graffiti, became rare on subway trains and the more accessible freight cars (fr8s) became the target of choice for contemporary graf artists. The practice of writing on freights, along with the emergence of graffiti fanzines, spread trends quickly and efficiently to urban and rural centres across North America (Jaite, 1996). Evidence of this can be seen in the high quality, large scale graffiti found in small Canadian cities such as Kingston, Ontario and even in Mistassini, a Crée community in Northern Quebec. Freights are enjoying more and more popularity because of their nature of travelling across the continent to be seen and photographed by other writers like a travelling exhibition of artists.

17 Graf writers switched their focus to painting on walls of buildings and tag artists coveredanyavailable surface. In New York one can see tags like an uninterrupted city-wide wallpaper pattern on moving vans, street lights, bus windows and buildings. The tag is considered the crudest and most prevalent form of graffiti. Most writers begin as taggers and graduate to larger pieces as they grow bolder and acquire technical skills.

18 The practice began as "tag" in a game sense in New York City where someone would hit a blank wall and others would follow, respect going to those who covered the most ground. Some gangs would mark their turf with tags but the majority were solo writers (Dunitz, 1993). The tag is a territorial mark that evokes a sense of presence. To the inexperienced viewer, the tag may not mean anything, but to someone in the community it is a personal symbol that signifies the inferiority, skills and risk of the writer.

19 Taggers who never produce large pieces are called scribblers and toys and have little status. In the mid 1980s graffiti writers set standards and mutually acknowledged a level of skills that had to be reached to merit the title of "writer" rather than the inferior "toy" (Farrell, 1997). A toy is a person who attempts graf without skills or the commitment to learn from other writers. A toy has not paid his dues and is not respected. His or her work is wack. lacking in skill and obviously inferior. Writers like to distinguish themselves from taggers. One becomes a writer when he or she has developed an individual style — in the hip-hop format — and painting skills to the point where the community accepts his or her presence and work. A crew is a loose association of graf writers. One writer may belong to any number of crews. Crews either paint together or acknowledge each other by writing their names around the edges of a graffiti piece. A crew is often mislabeled as a "gang:" a group forms a crew to paint, not for violence. Writers may steal paint if they lack the funds but other illegal activities are avoided. Most sources claim that graffiti provides a non-violent alternative to gangs, where young people could satisfy the same need to belong and identify with the lifestyle of a group (Birk, 1997; Castleman, 1982; Chalfant, 1984; Walsh 1996).

20 The act of graffiti is called bombing as in spray-bombing. Large pieces can be done by a single artist or a crew. A fanzine is a magazine devoted to a specific phenomenon. Some examples are Twelve Ounce Prophet (hip-hop graffiti), RIG (for and by window washers) or MotorRoot (Detroit music and news).

21 A great deal of reference and reverence is given to graffiti elders who invented styles and were the first to practice tagging and piecing (a larger form of graffiti art) in a substantial way. Names that come up often are FUTURA 2000, BLADE, ZEPHYR, PHASE 2 (who came up with a bubble letter style), LADY PINK (one of the few women mentioned), and TAKI 183. These writers set standards and styles that continue to be used and expanded upon today. Beyond these first few names, any attempt to cite a concise genealogy of graffiti quickly becomes convoluted; writers would change their names, adopt multiple names and belong to any number of crews.

22 As styles were adopted and mastered they spread from city to city, ever-evolving and changing depending upon the individual writers. For example, a current trend in graf is to simulate a three-dimensional effect (Fig. 3). No one graf artist is associated with having developed this method. In its infancy in the late 1970s, graf spread and changed slowly, via artists travelling to or from urban centres to pick up these skills. As the movement caught on, these images appeared in movies and rap music videos. Now influences spread quickly through fanzines, on freight trains crossing the country and especially via Web sites. Graffiti's influence on mainstream modern art goes back to Jean Dubuffet and Picasso who were attracted to graffiti and "outsider" art. Graffiti influenced abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly. By the 1980s graffiti had become completely co-opted by the contemporary art world through artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat (Snodgrass, 1994), who incorporated graffiti references into their own styles. As well, art dealers had graf artists paint canvases and found a market for them.

23 Recently specialty stores in urban centres such as Montreal and Toronto, that exclusively cater to a hip-hop clientele with clothing, graffiti equipment and fanzines, have opened. Spray nozzles (caps), which in the past were stolen from other aerosol products for their different spray patterns, are now mass-produced and sold. Ad agencies, such as Murad in Toronto and Montreal, now hire graffiti writers to paint large outdoor murals advertising jeans, beer and movies. The World Wide Web holds an ever-increasing amount of graffiti sites that link cities, names and images like a gallery and reference manual. This gives the appearance of an emerging organizational structure for the culture. Graffiti conventions are being announced and writers are easily located, facilitating a network.

24 The hip-hop world has established an ethical code that resists the move away from their street-culture roots into the realms of popular culture, commercialization and the internet. This code is known as keeping it real and generally snubs any writer who appears to have sold out. This accusation might be used to criticize graf that is made for commercial reasons. There seems to be a great deal of posturing within the community concerning the preservation of hip-hop ideals. For example, if a writer does not perform illegally, he or she may be criticized for not keeping it real. Some writers point out that Web sites and fanzines made the culture too easy to discover. They want to maintain hip-hop as a street culture where beginners have to learn about tools, techniques, and styles in die streets. However, other writers consider anything that extended appreciation of their art around the world to be great.

25 Tag artists set the example of using letters in an infinite variety of signature styles. The earliest paint renderings involved a simple colour composition and were easy to decipher. Much of current graffiti can be unreadable to the untrained eye and the colour and formal handling of the paint is sometimes dazzling (Fig. 4). The majority of graf artists work exclusively with their tag name and constantly rework the format and style of die lettering.

26 Some writers include images within the graffiti piece. A few artists make attempts at photo-realistic rendering but most incorporate a distinct cartoon style. Vaughn Bode (pronounced "bo-day"), an underground comic artist, influenced many graf writers with his organic drawing and lettering style of thick 3-D fonts that overlapped and crowded into each other. Bode characters, ranging from lizards to military characters, show up regularly in the pages of any graf fanzines.

27 Japanese Animé is another type of image seen more and more in contemporary graffiti. This is a comic and animated movie style of drawing that originated in Japan. One can find it in North American specialty stores (comic and science fiction shops) and even in current children's cartoons such as Sailor Moon. A typical animé style includes huge childlike eyes, teeth that are solid white with a single line separating the upper and lower rows and a small up-turned nose (Fig. 5). It can also be seen in depictions of technology. Animé style tends to be smooth, bubble-like, almost organic, with a few mechanical details. These formal similarities with the graffiti calligraphy aesthetic could account for its popularity with writers.

33 The actual choice of location varies from artist to artist. Many choose illegal locations from which they can escape quickly through various routes. Another priority for the location is high visibility to the viewing public. The more visible the piece, the more respect the writer gains for the risk taken. Nobody wants to be caught and writers will go to great extremes to escape from the authorities (Castleman, 1982, p. 165). Some artists paint rough-ins (the shading and outlines) at night and return in the very early dawn when there is enough visibility to finish details, but few police on patrol.

34 Each style of mural requires a different approach. All styles, except a monochromatic piece, use layers of colour. Writers often work back and forth between two colours to achieve the quality of line and form desired. All hip-hop writers look down upon the use of stencils, rulers or any other device that might aid the artist, except for the phat.caps.

35 Writers keep a black book to sketch ideas for pieces and to have other writers sign or sketch their tags (Fig. 7). At gatherings, writers bring their black books to increase their contacts with other writers and to show off their skills. Some writers work from a sketch in their hand when painting an outdoor piece while others strictly work from a mental image. Those who work from their head would still keep a black book in order to try out different image combinations and approaches. Respect is given to those who don't need to work from sketches. Writers are expected to use and develop a free-handed painting style. If a piece must be measured in any way, writers tend to use what is available such as the can itself (12") or their outstretched arms. It is remarkable how writers can intuitively transfer, with accurate dimensions, a small sketch to fit a large wall (Noah, 1997).

36 A throw-up is a spray-painted work of graffiti, using lettering only, in one or two colours. The term is literal, from the ability to "throw them up" on a wall quickly. A typical throw-up uses big lettering styles and is simple and quick. If two colours are painted, the background is usually white or silver. The throw-up letters tend to be two or three feet high (Fig. 8). Throw-ups emerged as a quick way to cover large areas (a rival's mural) and rail cars. Many writers consider throw-ups as being too close to tagging and tend to look down on them.

37 A large piece is the standard of hip-hop graffiti, ranging from at least six feet long and four feet high. Large pieces take hours to days, throw-ups take minutes, and tags take seconds. Murals, large pieces, and piecing all describe large multicoloured complex letter combinations that sometimes include cartoon images or portraits (Fig. 9). Some are large enough to be started with ladders, working from the top down. Some large pieces include cartoon images carrying handguns or engaged in the violence often seen in popular culture imagery.

38 Wildstyle is an extremely complex configuration of lettering resembling Celtic interlace. It is complicated to the point of being indecipherable to the untrained eye. Wildstyle graf resembles interlocking, 3-D mazes with arrows to suggest movement (Fig. 10).Wildstyle is usually only attempted by an accomplished, confident writer for the skill involved is entirely free-hand and very intricate. For example, DONDI claims, "When I write for other writers I use wildstyle, and when I write for the public I use straight letters" (Chalfant, 1984, p. 70).

39 A writer's focus is on the public exposure and proliferation of their work. Getting it up and getting it out there are the terms they use to describe this desire. For a community that prizes getting their work into the public eye, the attraction of painting trains is obvious. Painting a commuter train allows one's work to be viewed by an entire city. Freight trains can be seen across the continent. Imagine waiting impatiently at a remote rail crossing when suddenly a large piece passes by. Writers think of the moment when their work takes someone by surprise (TIMER). Writers are careful not to write over the information panels located at the side of every freight car. If the panels are left alone the piece is more likely to be untouched by the rail inspectors (SEAZ).

40 Most writers talk about skills and techniques as a fundamental basis of hip-hop graffiti. A writer who attempts a large piece without the necessary skills will be criticised for polluting the environment and giving hip-hop a bad reputation. Respect is a word that often comes up. Respect is attained and maintained by honing skills and keeping a high profile by continually getting it up. Dis is short for disrespect. A writer disses by criticizing or crossing out (paint over or disfigure) a piece. A writer is either respected or dissed, based on the large pieces that they have painted; the large piece is the measurement of all writers. If this happens enough times the writer will most likely quit (TIMER). Therefore writers practice in their black books before they consider attempting a large piece.

41 A writer can lose respect and be dissed for a variety of infractions: selling work or avoiding illegal painting in favour of legal walls, continually crossing out other writers' work with no cause, overtly seeking media attention, and informing on fellow writers to the police. Other ways to lose favour include biting (Art Crimes, 1995, glossary) — a writer who copies another's style is biting that style.

42 Respect is given to previous generations of writers for paying their dues. However, respect can be lost if older writers are perceived to be selling out by commercializing their work or opening a store. The illegal aspect of graffiti gains even more respect as graffiti becomes increasingly commercialized by mainstream culture.

43 There exists a paradox concerning fame among writers. They desire the notoriety of having their name painted everywhere and wish to receive the recognition for it, but they cannot appear to want this recognition too badly. If a writer is discreet about any media attention, despite the amount, they will retain their standing. Individuals who are perceived to be obsessed with being interviewed and photographed or claim to speak for the graf community at large will eventually be dissed and crossed out.

44 Writers who are seen as being focused and committed to piecing and acquiring skills while downplaying their fame, are held in the highest esteem. The goal is to be famous within the hip-hop culture and not necessarily outside of it. This is part of keeping it real. This ambiguous phrase has multiple meanings and could be discussed at great length. A simple interpretation is that hip-hop began as a street culture and writers should not forget that. For some hip-hop adherents, keeping it real is a restrictive ethic that reinforces the status quo and disregards innovation.

45 Various terms are used within hip-hop to describe graf exclusively. A burner is an exceptional piece. If a writer beat a competitor with his or her work they bum the competition. If the graf is highly regarded it is dope, fresh or the shit, as in "That throw-up is the shit! It's so amazing!" (DAES).

46 Some positive hip-hop adjectives include crazy (meaning "really" as in "crazy big") and mad (quantity, as in "mad graf"). To front is to hassle or provoke a fight with a competitor. Graf artists can have a battle where each writer fronts the other with painting techniques, although fronting can also refer to violence. If a writer paints or tags a surface they hit it. An area that is covered with a large quantity of tags or pieces has been hit up. If a writer is extremely prolific they kill (Art Crimes, glossary).

47 Members of the hip-hop community treat language in the same manner that graf writers adapt the alphabet. English is distorted, adapted, and blurred with other languages to the point that it begins to sound like a code or a new dialect that identifies different schools of thought.

48 Two terms that are used extensively within hip-hop are old school and new school. Old school refers to the historical New York hip-hop tradition with no definitive date. An old school graf style may refer to a lettering style from 1971 or 1987. Similar terms for this are back in the day, old days and old style. Some writers are more ritualistic in their adherence to the old styles and codes of the New York tradition, while others pride themselves on breaking boundaries by being innovative in their new school approach to hip-hop. Another term for new school is new style (Fig. 11).

49 Anyone who is really into traditional hip-hop adheres to the rules down to the way they tie their running shoes. I asked Robert Segovia, a devoted hip-hop breakdancer from 1981 to 1986, what he remembered about shoe laces. He listed the most important things, like fat laces in a variety of colours and his obsessive precision to tie them perfectly (Fig. 12).

50 This obsession for order and control is one example of how traditional hip-hop culture is a community defined by ritualistic codes of behaviour, dress, and language. Another paradox of the hip-hop community is this desire for conformity when graffiti is known for its resistance against systems of authority.

51 This summation of a standard culture caused me to question how idiosyncratic were the motivations of individual writers, or to what degree was their involvement driven by a need to belong to a community and to feel part of a tradition? How were they as individuals acculturated into this community? Can an understanding of how adolescents learn outside of schools lead to more self-directed learning within school systems? Does autonomy and the mastering of technical and networking skills motivate and build self-esteem in adolescents? What are the investigative processes that go on in the conception and implementation of graffiti mural painting?

62 New school writers became poetic when they described their motivations while the old school seemed to be more concerned about the thrill of being subversive and the response of peers. SEAZ was my chief informant from old school graffiti culture in Montreal, who modelled himself after traditional New York hip-hop, as outlined in the first half of this article. He came from La Salle, a working class suburb west of Montreal. He talked with anger about his father who was an abusive alcoholic. The "high" or "euphoria" that drove SEAZ to continue painting into his adult life (despite being fined after a year of prolonged, inconvenient court hearings) came from a sense of empowerment at transgressing laws and institutions of power. He identified himself as a vandal, not an artist. SEAZ wrote in his black book,

The paradox and irony within the power and authority of law is that without it, there would be no taboo or norm to transgress (Foucault, 1977). In Getting Up, Subway Graffiti in New York, Castleman devoted three chapters to the politics of graffiti and the repercussions of the mayor of New York city's anti-graffiti program. The amount of graffiti kept rising along with the costs to clean it up. "In 1970 the MTA's (Metropolitan Transit Authority) graffiti-cleaning costs were estimated to be $300,000; 1971, $600,000; in 1972, $1.3 million and in 1973, $2.7 million, with 'unsatisfactory results'." (Castleman, 1982, p. 149) The more the authorities put up fences, brought in police dogs and graffiti squads, the more the graffiti writers resisted and enjoyed showing how they could outsmart the system.

63 Does the judicial system encourage that which it sets out to combat? Foucault (1977) called it a closed circuit, an "ensemble" (police, the prison and the delinquent), which supports itself. He argued how the system actually profited from exploiting illegalities such as prostitution, arms trafficking, and the illegal sale of alcohol in prohibition countries. The way politicians profit from graffiti is to use it as a platform to look actively involved in controlling crime. An article in the Press Republican reports, "former President Jimmy Carter rolls some paint over a mural at an abandoned dwelling...Splashing messy globs of paint on graffiti-scarred walls...helped polish gritty city streets." (Fournier, 1997)

64 SEAZ said bitterly, "I attack what they claim is so precious and ruin their little glass city which they (politicians) have erected somehow... We've proven that they can find that money to spend (cleaning graffiti); why not spend it on those who need it? At the conventions we had, we gave the money to poor people."

65 The old school ethic of keeping it real means to value illegal painting as an act of rebellion against institution of power. This game of maintaining resistance is a concrete example of Foucault's idea about the closed circuit ensemble. If the resistance was gone who would there be to argue with? SEAZ said, "The people who are against it are your driving force and once people aren't against it then it gets lost. There's no more attention drawn to it." He saw himself as representing the small man against "the system." More than once he referred to Tianamen square and how young people were always the ones to stand up for freedom against "Big Brother." The solidarity of the marginalized group gave the individual a sense of personal power and freedom against the authority of power structures.

66 SINGE said she got a rush out of tagging places like McDonald's, the university and supermalls because she felt helpless against their aggression into her environment and peoples' values. Foucault argued "that it is not crime that alienates an individual from society, but that crime is itself due rather to the fact that one is in society as an alien" (1977, p. 276). This is usually the more traditional justification for hip-hop, resisting judicial taboos, which can be traced back to its origins in poverty.

67 Postmodern critiques of capitalism have opened up the potential for social criticism and a new awareness of our environment. One argument in defense of graffiti is that advertising is compliant with dominant power structures: public space is controlled by those who have the money to buy it (Fig. 14). In a democracy how can society condemn those who have no monetary means to claim their own space and to work towards changing their environment?

68 A strong socialist sentiment of putting people before systems came through in all the interviews. Many of the participants began tagging in their adolescence when they were looking to change their identity and to associate themselves with a community's lifestyle of their choice. SEAZ began for the sheer pleasure of making his mark but as he became acculturated into the community he learned to reflect and to articulate critical concerns. The dialogue surrounding graffiti caused the participants to become politicized about the sharing of public space. Under art in the Oxford Dictionary one finds "the art of politics, the art of criticism." Thucydides, the Greek historian of the fifth century B.C., defined politics as "activity with other people at every level, from the family, to the neighbourhood, to the broader community, to the city-state" (Shorris, 1997). The essence of education is to empower people to have control over their lives and to affect change within and beyond their community. All of the participants talked about how graffiti opened doors for them through the people they met and made them aware of issues larger than themselves. Many began out of an adolescent attraction to the thrill of the experiences but then became serious enough to learn what hip-hop was all about. Their desire to communicate and work with peers caused them to pick up skills and knowledge because of their relevance to everyday life.

69 In contemporary urban culture many walls are public property where different groups compete for space. Some look like a bricolage of posters, half torn and layered over time to resemble a Schwitter's collage. Many artists look at the banality of everyday life and take to die streets for their inspiration. Rauschenburg gave discarded objects new life in his early assemblages and then began using mass-produced images that surround one daily in media and advertising. Pop art is another reference that could be used to categorize graffiti within the art world. Like pop art, graffiti is influenced by the graphic language and style of advertising. The fact that graffiti murals resemble the style of advertising and contain recycled images from popular culture shows that writers do not merely consume, but synthesize and translate their environment into another medium and context. New school writers had a strong sense of identity and were critically aware of how youth were targeted as a group to buy into consumer culture. GENE graduated from university with a degree in fine art. He disregarded issues of high and low art, mixing images from art history, comics, posters or anything that interested him from his environment as raw material for his paintings.

70 When I asked GENE what he thought about the criticism that hip-hop graffiti resembled advertising, he was quick to give a well thought out answer.

71 ACE said, "Graffiti is like taking simple words and making it into art. You could write anything down the normal way but if you tag it, you do it as graffiti, it's almost like there is new meaning to it. The word has more power. It's being direct and straightforward. Graffiti is like inventing your own letters — the way to personalize your own letters. It's almost like your handwriting." EVOKE said the meaning of words in graffiti was "obliterating any meaning at all, like what the word means...just using it as a reference point, seeing how much you can do with drat set." The "set" of letters provides a structure like the forms of musical notation that one masters and then plays with. There is a sense of being part of a tradition that one can learn and then improvise upon. Anyone serious enough to be really involved knows the names of those who have established different styles and works steadily to build upon them.

72 Hip-hop graffiti can be compared to jazz or folk music, which also plays with the tension between structural order and intuitional improvisation. There is awareness of the standards set by others who have gone on before and the continuity in evolving these. Those really into the culture of hip-hop graffiti honestly acknowledge those who have developed styles and repertoire, and share a work ethic to develop the technical ability to articulate and possibly go beyond existing standards. When a writer feels secure in learning the various styles from past performers, he/she can abandon it to free play in the moment. TIMER said free play was popular right now in hip-hop graffiti. It means you do all your drawing and practising at home so that painting in public can move towards improvisation in the single performance. The letters and styles of past writers provide the structure that, when mastered, disappears into a wild style of indecipherable forms. Now that hip-hop has become popular and derivative, there is often a lack of knowledge about where hip-hop originated. Hip-hop graffiti is still largely by and for its own community, but interaction with the environment brings in new influences that causes it to continually evolve.

73 The topic of graffiti being co-opted by advertising came up in every interview. Younger members were highly motivated by the subversive quality of hip-hop graffiti and wanted to maintain its marginal status. DAES, an eighteen-year-old writer, still in high school and living with parents in Canmore, Alberta, argued against hip-hop graffiti becoming commercialized.

74 Older writers, like TIMER, accepted hip-hop becoming mainstream as a natural course of events that they were willing to cash in on to make an honest living while staying in the culture by continuing to paint illegally. I was curious to talk to TIMER about this since he was being criticized by others for having sold out. He became very scornful of younger writers who dissed him for not keeping it real. TTMER responded, "That's stupid! They're all buying this stuff from TV. They're kids who still have a curfew and living at their parents' house and their parents are paying for everything and its like, keeping it real! Yeah what's real man...They have adolescence crises, they are focusing on hip-hop and all the culture of it."

75 Young writers like DAES who were passionate about discovering "this great art form," resented people like TIMER for standardizing hip-hop images on t-shirts and selling them at Cellblock (a store specializing in hip-hop and graffiti products). Old school members like SEAZ and FLOW criticized this store because they wanted to keep graffiti as it was, when one had to be part of street culture to access information. Now anyone can walk into Cellblock to buy different spray caps, magazines, videos and hip-hop clothes. Cellblock is selling a lifestyle to young people and in the process losing hip-hop graffiti's marginal status. However, SEAZ was benefiting from hip-hop's popularity for he earned his living working for his friend's hip-hop clothing manufacturing business.

76 It is typical for older writers to straddle both the commercial and illegal worlds of hip-hop. GENE, DSTRBO and GOFISH now form a group called HEAVYWEIGHT that contracts mural painting through the Stone Away Gallery in Montreal. SEAZ and his crew have become influenced by this group, forming their own commercial mural company called URBAN EXPRESSION. Recently they painted a large mural of a western scene on Duluth Street in Montreal, with a phone number beneath to advertise their services. However, both groups still take pride in their illegal activities. They have to make a living but still want to keep it real. EVOKE said, "when pieces are legal they don't have that same feel anymore. That's what I'm afraid of. I don't want to lose that feel of graffiti on walls." All of the participants, when questioned about the significance of the illegal act of writing, tried to express the illusive feel of the "real" experience. Like any marginal group, graffiti is distinguished by it's resistance to the norm of social consciousness and social order. It is built into the culture to resist complete assimilation by cultivating a disdain for the trivialization of commercialization.

77 All the participants spoke of their respect for the arena of public space and for those who took it seriously. Both old and new school enjoyed painting illegally in a public space. This gave the work a performative — "I was here" — resonance that was often felt only by those who participated; the tension and euphoria felt while painting was communicated to peers who had similar experiences. GENE said, "they (writers) know what that means.. .to produce on the spot under pressure." Peers can re-create and share the significance of the action while an outsider would only see the end product.